Of Cash and Contracts
by L. Alex Greene
Summary: "I highly doubt Torrio pulled the trigger. But I would be astounded if he didn't sanction it." The deal struck, Meyer and Charlie return home, but not without looking over their shoulders every step of the way. T for language. Part 8 of "Petty Crimes."


Their last full day in Chicago is spent accompanying Torrio through the streets he calls home. Neither Meyer nor Charlie is particularly interested in a guided tour, but Meyer knows that diplomacy is important. Besides, one day, he might need the information.

At dinner that night (again at Big Jim's), the cash finally changes hands. In two plain black briefcases, Torrio gives them $1,250,000, all in hundred-dollar bills. The briefcases certainly feel heavy enough, although Meyer fully plans to count the stacks once they're back at the Ritz for the night. It's not that he doesn't trust Torrio, but it's not his own money on the line.

Charlie's never seen so much cash in his life. Then again, neither has Meyer, but he's used to working with staggering amounts on paper.

"Shit. Fuck. Holy _shit_, Mey! Look at all this!"

"Start counting. There should be one hundred and twenty-five stacks of hundreds, bundled in a hundred bills each." Meyer holds up a stack. "Each one of these is ten-thousand dollars."

The notes have clearly been circulated before. Meyer prefers it that way—they're non-sequential, harder to track. A.R. prefers it that way, too. Rothstein hasn't been to jail yet, and there's a reason for that.

"I got... sixty-three stacks," Charlie finally says. He picks up one of the stacks and flicks through it with his thumb. "Six-hundred thirty thousand dollars. Jesus. Is this for real?"

Meyer smiles to himself, leaning back in his chair. His tuxedo jacket is draped across the back of his chair, his bow tie undone around his neck, but it's still been a rewarding few days. Now that all the cash is accounted for (he has sixty-two stacks in the briefcase in front of him, bringing the total to the predicted one hundred and twenty-five), all they have to do is make it onto their train tomorrow morning and they're home free. It'll be a relief to finally head home, although he knows by now that the dynamic has changed. He isn't going back to his numbers-running, not like he used to. For better or worse, he's an emissary now. He just hopes he gets to keep working with Charlie. They complement each other well.

"That was fuckin' brilliant, though," Charlie adds, snapping the lid of the briefcase closed and grinning at Meyer. "Playin' Torrio like that—that was fuckin' great."

"I had a feeling," Meyer murmurs. He's just glad it worked. Dropping Carolyn's name had been a shot in the dark, but he was pretty sure Torrio had a soft spot for A.R.'s wife. The fact that it paid off... "I need to tell A.R. we struck a deal."

"An' for a quarter-mil more than he asked for!" Charlie says gleefully.

"That, too." Meyer pulls out his phone. As always, A.R. answers almost immediately.

"Meyer. Good news this time?"

"Yes. Very good, actually. We settled with Torrio."

"He finally came to a million?"

"We got him to agree on one-point-two-five."

Rothstein doesn't say anything for a few moments, and Meyer isn't sure that he heard him. "A.R.?"

"I'm here. Has he actually paid you yet?"

"Yes. It's all here. We already counted."

Again, A.R. is quiet. Finally he murmurs, "I'm impressed."

Meyer would certainly hope so. "Thank you."

"Keep your eyes open until you get onto the train. I'll be there to get you once you arrive back in New York."

"Alright."

"By the way, you haven't seen Frankie Yale in Chicago by any chance, have you?"

Meyer had been just about to hang up, but he pauses. "Frankie Yale? No, I haven't. Did he leave New York?"

"He did. He said something about going to see a friend of his in Chicago. I thought you might have seen him. Oh, well. It's not important. Chicago is a big city."

"Of course."

Meyer hangs up with a slight sense of unease, but he doesn't get a chance to ponder it for long. He turns in his seat and sees Charlie grinning at him. "What?"

"You done on the phone?" Charlie asks, tapping a large black remote against his shoulder.

"Yes..."

"Good. Check this out!" Charlie hits a button on the remote. For a few seconds, nothing happens, and Meyer thinks maybe Charlie's gone off the deep end. But then there's a piano flourish from unseen speakers and the unmistakeable beginning of Abba's "Dancing Queen," and the hugest smile Meyer's ever seen splits Charlie's face. Now Meyer's _sure_ he's gone off the deep end.

"And why are we listening to Abba?"

"Because! This is my favorite song ever! An' Abba is so fuckin' underrated!" Charlie tosses the remote onto the table and begins singing along. _"Friday night and the lights are low..."_

Meyer has a hard time believing this is actually happening right now. Charlie is being absolutely ridiculous, singing and dancing like he's at a disco club in the seventies. But he's having fun, and Meyer is almost forced to smile as Charlie finally grabs his hands and sings, _"You are the dancing queen, young and sweet, only seventeen."_

"I'm twenty-two, Charlie," Meyer reminds him, but Charlie shakes his head.

"Not anymore, Mey! _Dancing queen, feel the beat from the tambourine, oh, yeah!"_

"Why are you doing this?"

"_You can dance, you can dance, having the time of your life!"_

Meyer finds himself laughing in spite of himself. Maybe Charlie's enthusiasm is infectious, or maybe it's the relief that their three days in Chicago are nearly over, but he feels like celebrating a bit, too. Besides, they _did_ just seal a deal for $1.25 million dollars. He knows that's not something everyone his age can say.

So against his better judgment, he lets Charlie pull him into dancing, too. He even sings along a little, too—even though he hasn't heard the song since he was five, he still knows all the words to it, and he's actually a decent singer. Not like Charlie—no matter how ridiculous he looks, he still sounds amazing as he sings.

He hates to admit that knowing Charlie likes this song is playing with his head a bit. He isn't going to be able to hear it again without thinking about him. It'll always bring him back to this one shining, triumphant moment in Chicago.

Oddly, he's okay with it.

* * *

Capone drops them off at the train station early the next morning. He's quiet on the drive over and he doesn't hang around long, which Meyer isn't going to complain about.

The suitcases have been left in their suite. Charlie brought a large duffel bag with him, and they emptied the cash into it instead. Meyer thinks it's a little obvious that there's cash in it—over a million dollars' worth—especially with the way Charlie's leaning into the bag to support the weight (all that cash is actually rather heavy), but Charlie insisted.

Meyer keeps his eyes open and his head on a swivel, constantly surveying the other people on the platform until they board the train. Even in their compartment, he doesn't relax until the train finally pulls away from the station and they're on their way to New York.

"Well, at least that's over," he murmurs, leaning back in his seat and peeling off his jacket.

Charlie stands up and starts pacing. "You don't think that was too easy?"

"Of course I do. But unless they put an assassin on the train, I think we're okay now."

"Just keep your gun on you. I don't trust these Chicago pricks, especially now."

"Especially now what?"

"Especially now that we got over a million dollars a' their money."

"It's not theirs anymore. They just purchased over a million dollars' worth of the Rothsteins' product."

"Yeah, but they may not see it that way. Especially since Torrio didn't wanna crack a million. They may think they got fleeced."

Charlie's right. But aside from standing by the door with their guns drawn for the next twenty-one hours, there's not much else they can do to fend off an attack. And that could be a bad idea, too—if he were the one contracted to kill two New York upstarts with more than a million dollars in a duffel bag, he'd just wait until he knew they were both inside and unload a magazine through the door, or wait until everyone on the train went to sleep and sneak in to shoot them, execution-style.

"Right now, we're okay," Meyer says. "If there's someone here to kill us, they're probably smart. They probably won't make a move until everyone's asleep for the night. Too much of a chance for a scene otherwise."

Charlie glances at the door. "Alright. Well, in that case, we might as well sleep now, 'cause I _definitely_ ain't sleepin' tonight." He drops onto the tiny sofa and stretches out, putting his head right in Meyer's lap and closing his eyes. "Wake me at lunch."

Meyer chuckles. His fingers are magnetically drawn to Charlie's curls (he didn't bother putting any pomade into his hair this morning) and through the soft strands.

He keeps his other hand on the grip of the pistol tucked under his left arm.

* * *

Throughout the whole trip, they switch off who sleeps and who stays awake, watching for intruders. Whenever they leave to get food, they both go and they lock the duffel bag of cash in the little closet in their compartment. If there's someone on the train to kill them, they don't make their move, because when they finally step off the train and into the Grand Central terminal, they still have the cash in hand. They're both exhausted and a bit worse for the wear (after lunch, Charlie didn't go back to sleep at all, even when it was his turn), but they're alive, and A.R. is waiting for them in a powder-blue seersucker suit.

He smiles when he sees them. "Welcome home, boys. Have a good trip?"

_You know goddamn well what kind of trip we had_, Meyer thinks bitterly. "We're glad to be home."

"That's for damn sure," Charlie adds, hiding a yawn.

A.R. just continues smiling as he turns and leads them out into the blinding August New York noon. He doesn't say anything else to them until they're all in the limousine on the way to his office. "So that's the cash?" he asks with a nod toward the duffel bag on the floor.

Charlie nods, and A.R. hauls the bag up onto the seat next to him and unzips it. He peers inside for a few moments, and then starts taking out bundles. One at a time, he tosses stacks toward Meyer and Charlie until both of them has twelve bundles. He takes out one more and hands it over to Charlie. "Split that. A hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars each. Normally, I have a broker's fee of ten percent split between whoever goes, but since I was only expecting to net nine-hundred thousand..." A.R. shrugs. "So both of you get ten percent. Good job."

_Holy shit. _Meyer shoves his money into his suitcase as quickly as he can while Charlie counts out fifty hundreds and hands the rest of the last bundle to him. He puts the last five thousand dollars in his jacket pocket, mentally reeling at cash he's just been given. Charlie's eyes look like they're about to bug out of his head, but he's grinning as he begins stashing his own money.

"So, have you heard any of the news out of Chicago?" A.R. asks once Meyer and Charlie have both regained their composure.

"News?" Meyer asks. "What news?"

"About Colosimo."

Meyer and Charlie exchange looks. "No, we haven't. What happened with Colosimo?"

"Someone put him out of business." A.R. tilts his head to the side and puts his first two fingers to his temple, and Meyer gets the idea: Colosimo is dead.

"Do they have any idea who did it?"

"No suspects thus far, at least none that they mentioned. Then again, the Chicago police weren't exactly fans of Colosimo, so they probably won't look into it very hard."

"When'd it happen?" Charlie asks.

"Oh, a few hours after your train left Chicago, so don't worry. It was around two or three yesterday afternoon. But Colosimo's death leaves Torrio number one there in our particular business. He was Torrio's uncle through his stepfather," A.R. adds, almost offhandedly.

"But this doesn't change anything, does it?" Meyer asks.

"It shouldn't. From what I understand, Colosimo wasn't really 'in the game' anymore, so to speak. He just gave his consent for the Chicago deals. And now that Torrio's on top, I don't see this deal changing."

"Think Torrio did it?" Charlie asks.

"I highly doubt Torrio pulled the trigger himself. But did he sanction it? Does he know who actually killed Colosimo? I would be astounded if he didn't."

"Maybe it was Capone," Charlie murmurs.

"Who?" A.R. asks.

"Capone. Al Capone," Meyer explains. "One of the people who works for Torrio. He acted as our chauffeur while we were in Chicago." It makes sense, too. Capone seemed distracted when he dropped them off at the station. "It's possible. We didn't get personal with him, but he seemed like the type who wouldn't have a problem killing someone on orders."

"Or for fun," Charlie adds darkly.

A.R. nods slowly. "Well, we may never know who actually did it. The point is that there's been a shift in Chicago. I'm sure the other cities are already eyeing their investments in Chicago and wondering about their deals, so it'll be an interesting few weeks, I think. Oh, well, it doesn't matter now. The first shipment is already on its way to Chicago, and we're already in business."

Meyer definitely isn't about to weep for Colosimo, but he isn't sure he likes the situation, either. Judging by the look Charlie shoots him, he feels the same. A.R.'s right about one thing, though: It will definitely be an interesting few weeks as the dust settles in Chicago.


End file.
